Depression or the state of low mood adversely affects thoughts and behavior of humans and gives rise to disability in people. People with depressed mood lose interest in their lives and their activities. Depression also escalates risks of patients suffering from other health problems and may even obstruct the line of treatment for such patients. For example, risk associated with a person suffering from neurological health problems is escalated when he/she is also suffering from depression. Further, in several instances, depression can also lead to various neurological disorders that may cause gait abnormalities. It is therefore important to identify and monitor patients suffering from depression. Also, it is equally important to determine and analyze if the patient is showing symptoms of neurological disorders and gait abnormalities.
Various approaches are known in the art for monitoring patients for depression and neurological disorders. A general approach include diagnosis of an individual under depression by the aid of existing interview tools comprising pre-set questionnaire that may be administered by a physician. For example, the physician may ask the patient if he/she has been feeling low, depressed or hopeless in the past few weeks or if he/she had suicidal thoughts. The physician may also enquire about his/her sleep pattern and energy levels and ask if the patient prefers to stay at home rather than going out and/or doing new things in order to determine if the patient is suffering from depression.
Similarly, abnormal gait patterns such as loss of balance, abnormal walking and speech patterns in humans can be detected using sensors, biometric devices and other clinical devices or equipment. The abnormal gait patterns can also be detected using various available methods including determining alterations in gait speed, head turns, clearing obstacle, climbing steps; measuring time taken to walk in different situations such as walking on a hard floor or on a carpeted floor, stepping over a brick-like object, walking around an object etcetera; evaluating performance of the patient along a series of simulations of functional mobility tasks or situations in home environment; and distinguishing between fallers and non-fallers.
The afore-mentioned approaches clearly indicate that physical presence of a doctor or a physician is always needed to carry out the detection of depression and gait abnormalities in patients. For example, the use of interview tools comprising pre-set questionnaire is dependent on the questionnaire between a doctor and a patient and the response from the patient in form of text to extract the emotion of the subject. The methods known for detection of abnormal gait patterns also involve presence of a physician or a doctor. This certainly does not effectively solve the widespread issues of detection of depression and gait abnormality. The prevalence of these issues across the world necessitates the need of remote management systems and methods for automatic detection of depression and abnormal gait pattern wherein a computer-aided diagnosis of depression and abnormal gait pattern is used and subsequently a report is generated based on the initial symptoms visible from the facial expressions and gait of an individual. The remotely managed systems and methods for carrying out the detection of depression and gait abnormalities in individuals do not require clinical equipment or physical presence of physicians.
Various computer-aided solutions are known in the art for detecting and monitoring depressions and gait abnormality in individuals. However, these solutions are very slow and fail to precisely detect expressions and are unable to identify real facial motion such as fine motions in the lip and eye regions. These solutions also do not identify dominant regions of motion that largely contributes to the analysis of depression and abnormal gait patterns. The available solutions further fail to provide remote management of patients suffering from depression and gait abnormality.
In light of the above, there is a need for a system and method for predicting one or more neurological disorders. Further, there is a need for a system and method to identify depression and abnormal gait patterns in individuals remotely or locally. Furthermore, there is a need for a computer-aided system and method that eliminates the requirement of questionnaire from physicians, sensors, and other medical equipment. In addition, there is a need for a system and method to identify and monitor fine movements and dominant regions of motion that largely contributes in identifying and monitoring depression and abnormal gait patterns in patients.